In the comments of the previous strip, I said, “In hindsight, the ideal thing would have been to cast Aragorn as a dumb, distracted stoner. He spends about half of the movie blinking very, very slowly. I can come up with a shot of him looking baked or mouth-open stoopid in just about any scene. I should make a “I am so high” montage out of all these shots.“

The amount of screen time he spends in a vacant stare or a prolonged blink is sort of alarming. I’ve come to think of him as Stareagorn.

I get to be second?! Cool! It would be really funny if they changed sides. At some point, probably pretty soon, I think they would want to change back. That would be even more hilarious. But I guess the DM is not going to allow that to happen.

Two minutes? Finding out that he might have VD took up a quarter of that time.

Well Aragorn does spend alot of time with a pipe in his mouth. So I suppose that makes sense. Although I always took Gandalf for the refer head. He is always so “amused by little things that aren’t really all that funny…….like hobbits, nobody enjoys hobbits in all of middle earth except Gandalf. He just thinks they are so darn funny and surprising. Kinda how I feel about midgets

Interesting that the players have forgotten about Merry and Pippin, the object of their so-called quest.

So’s the DM-Gandalf never gave a hint that they were alive. As far as our dear players know, they were eaten by things in the woods. At least the book Gandalf explained that they were SAFE before they left for Edoras.

“It seems to me that fantasy worlds would be much safer if they just killed ugly people on sight.”
Now THERE’S a scary quest just waiting to happen!

Shamus, if this is your output when you think you got nuthin, that’s just fine with me. “Two actually,” “what a total surprise”, and the whole last panel. combined w/ excellent screencaps. Laughing as silently as I can here…

“I don't know what an RSS reader is. (What kind of a geek does *that* make me? I guess not a very good one.)”

It’s a program that automatically checks links for updates (special RSS links, Twenty Sided Tale has one). They’re all the rage amongst the Web2.0 folks. It doesn’t hurt your geek cred though, as I don’t use one, and I’ve learned three flavors of assembly language (soon to learn another) amongst other things.

So, now that you know about RSS, just make sure that you blow it off as “communist”–because that’s what it is. ;)

Curmudgeonyness, in general, is a great way to protect your geek cred against new technological developments.

Hi, someone’s probably already said this, but you could always have the original Aragon leave the group (or go on vacation / get deployed / whatever) and have a stoner-player take him over, even for just a few sessions, if you’ve got somemore good shots of stoner-Aragon.

Legolas does bring an interesting question for you all: how many times have players had their characters change sides? We play ‘good’ because… well… we’re “ethical”, but, really, how much fun would it be to screw the DM and have characters suddenly side with the forces of evil? ;)

Hah! Hilarious. Although I probably shouldn’t be reading this while doing my homework, seeing as how frequent giggles give me away…Yeah I need to work on my subtle-complimenting skills. Whatever. Anyway it was really funny to read!

hendrake, it’s funny you should suggest having the original Aragorn leave because he was deployed. My gaming group lost two players because of folks getting sent off by the military. We started asking newcomers, “Are you now, or do you plan in the near future to be, in the military?” :-)

Actually, changing sides doesn’t really affect a DM not obsessed with ‘his’ story… I DM’ed a party that were decidedly evil, though still kinda following plot while being selfish, disinterested, and destructive in town.
The ‘good guys’ in town and working with them started letting them know how they felt (“Man that guy’s a real jerk!”), and other bad guys started gravitating towards them, distracting them and letting the main bad guys get further towards their goals, making it harder for the characters.
Eventually, another party (of NPCs) came in and started acting more how the town wanted, and the party’s help resources started drying up. Oh, and the other group started getting ‘their’ rewards…

Oh, and on-topic: great site – I just discovered it the other day, and utterly wasted my productivity… Thanks a lot, Shamus, though the commentary below is just as amusing as the comic. So, I guess, thanks everyone, for a delightful site!

“Wow. I leave for ten minutes and suddenly the plot starts moving again.”

That should be a Clue.

(Not necessarily in this case, but when the party goes through four times the encounters they normally would every time a particular player doesn’t make a session, perhaps that player ought to re-examine his “contribution” to the game.)

OK Shamus, the problem with the bogus 403 return page isn’t anything to do with corporate firewalls. I posted that last from my home PC and got the stupid anti-spam 403. Not only does the “fix it yourself” link go nowhere useful, the e-mail address for you on the page isn’t real either.

Not only that, having told me that because I’m a suspicious git my post isn’t going to show up, it lets it through anyway.

It looks like your antispam measures aren’t working. I was going to say “working right” but I realised that isn’t true. They aren’t working at all.

Our poor, poor first 3.0 D&D gm. Poor, poor guy. We created our characters and we came up with why we were together, on our own. We were part-time adventurers who co-owned an inn, a bard & two rogues. And we were _all_ Chaotic Neutral. Doing it ‘because it’s the right thing to do’ just wasn’t right impetus.

Find the missing girl? Not really interested.

Track down the rogues who mugged someone in our neighborhood? Yeah, we’ll do that. Our inn’s in a borderline neighborhood & if our customers get mugged we’ll lose business.

The only reason he has those blank stares all the time is because, unlike John-Rhys Davies or Sir Ian McKellen, however extremely similar to Orlando Bloom and Keanu Reeves, Viggo Mortensen is talentless and can’t act to save a caterpillar. But, I guess if he wasn’t there to show comparative alternatives, Sir Ian McKellen would never have gotten an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

” in hindsight, the ideal thing would have been to cast Aragorn as a dumb, distracted stoner. He spends about half of the movie blinking very, very slowly. I can come up with a shot of him looking baked or mouth-open stoopid in just about any scene. I should make a “I am so high” montage out of all these shots.”

The amount of screen time he spends in a vacant stare or a prolonged blink is sort of alarming. I've come to think of him as Stareagorn.”

PRICELESS. you should SO do that *is laughing so hard her family is questioning her sanity*